Whither War on Terror

Columnist Dr S M RAHMAN wonders where the campaign against terror is going.

Violence wherever it occurs is detestable and cannot be condoned. Yet, paradoxically human history has never been free of violence, and particularly this age has earned the notoriety of being the most violent. Our confusion is further confounded if terrorism, which falls in the taxonomy of violence is to be given a definition, which could lend international consensus. The central idea behind terrorism is that “dissatisfied elements within a state cannot tolerate the indifference of the latter to their grievances beyond a limit and take recourse to violence. But once that violence is unleashed the state too does not tolerate it beyond a limit and retaliates with massive force. In the process it tends to violate certain human rights of individuals not necessarily associated with the said disgruntled elements. A vicious cycle is thus created which has no beginning and end, only a rotational motion”. The same is true of international war on terror.
So pervasive is the phenomenon “terrorism” that it has become a matter of flesh and blood. Every nation has faced it in varying degrees. The British media, for instance brought the gruesome tragedy so vividly in the electronic media that the whole Western world became so panicky when two time bombs placed in the crowded Birmingham pubs on 21st November 1974 led to loss of several innocent citizens. The terrorist acts have made the entire human civilization vulnerable, be it through hijacking episode or hostage taking. The threat of terrorism has multiplied to a staggering proportion, but it is ironical that no serious notice or remedial measures were considered unless a super power like USA was targeted on 11th September 2001. This, in itself, is a question to ponder why some lives are so sacrosanct to be concerned about while the rest who die in thousands and millions are hardly taken notice of, as if they were the children of lesser gods.
Thousands of Palestinians are dying and so are the Kashmiris and Chechnyans but the superpower is so callously indifferent. Nobody in his senses has ever condoned the killing of the innocent citizens in the Trade Centre tragedy but what has intrigued the world is the way the revenge war was launched on innocent people of Afghanistan, who had hardly contributed to the tragedy. Real culprits are still hiding and their identity has not fully come to light. A Global Inquiry Commission should have unravelled the mystery.
USA with great alacrity unilaterally targeted Afghanistan, which was already devastated due to the ravages of war, and the anarchy that came in its wake, tore apart the entire social fabric of the society. Talibanism was a creation of that callous neglect which USA has shown after its strategic objective of attaining unipolarity was accomplished. History, will perhaps never condone this gross injustice meted out to the people of Afghanistan who fought so valiantly to repel Soviet aggression.
While terrorism is indeed to be detested but under its fog, if nations are taking recourse to crushing the legitimate liberation movements it is indeed worst form of terrorism and gross violation of moral values and norms of justice. India, Israel and Russia deemed it expedient to crush the legitimate aspirations of people for independence. To call their uprising ‘terrorism’ is a great distortion of semantics. Wars of liberations cannot be treated at par with terrorism.
Acts of violence have always manifested due to pathological human personalities, more specifically due to low self-esteem and ‘injured narcissism’ but these aberrations could not be equated with political terrorism, which are conceived as weapons of last resort to seek justice, which is denied to the seekers of freedom. Modern science and technology and weapons of destruction are no monopoly of any individual or any nation. Concepts and ideas and in fact, knowledge of all kinds need no visas to travel across borders. To underestimate the ingenuity and capabilities of a terrorist is based on self-conceit and grandiose ideas about one’s own infallibility. This is the major flaw in the whole concept of so-called war against terror.
Terrorism is multi-causal and no one concept can do justice to the understanding of this complex phenomenon. Socio-economic injustices, alienation of the marginalized groups in the society are as much causes of terrorism as the denial of much coveted sense of freedom. Therefore, it is imperative that terrorism is not used as a blanket term to cover legitimate aspirations of the people, which ultimately manifests itself in their apprising against repressive forces. Without finding a judicious solution to the issues of Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan and Chechnya, which are hanging far too long on the global conscience, one cannot hope to succeed in any war against terror.
Political deprivations, whether it is in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Indonesia or elsewhere should not be labelled as fundamentalism to malign any community or religion. In fact religious extremism is itself result of denial of justice. For instance, the success of the religious parties in the recent elections of Pakistan is an eye opener, for never in the political history of Pakistan, Islamic parties have been able to muster 3 to 4 percent support. Why did the Frontier Province and Balochistan favour religious groups is a question which seeks objective assessment. These people who live in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan have seen the tragedy that their brethren in Afghanistan have gone through at the hands of USA. Their vote reflects a total condemnation of the American policy being followed in the name of so-called war against terror.
What has America gained out of the war against terror is enigmatic. The scope of terror in the world has widened. CIA Director George J Tenet issued a warning that “Al-Qaeda posed as much of a danger to the US as it did before the September 11 terrorist attacks. That’s a bummer because, if true, it means that “the much-celebrated regime change in Afghanistan didn’t even slow down Osama bin Laden’s gang of psychos. It is then doubly difficult to make the case that a regime change in Iraq would make Americans safer from Al-Qaeda terrorism because there is not a shred of reliable evidence linking that to Hussein”. Neither Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden nor Taliban leader Mulla Omar have yet been apprehended to bring them to the court of justice nor there appears to be any likelihood that they would be traced, yet the punishment is given to people who had nothing to do with the Al-Qaeda or any such terrorist groups. It is this gross violation of human justice, which makes the whole war on terror look rather suspicious. The very nations who supported USA initially are reluctant to go along with the US Agenda of attacking Iraq for possessing so-called weapons of mass destruction. There is no evidence whatsoever. The concept of pre-emptive strike being pursued by George Bush is nothing but a total defiance of international law.
Edward Spannaus rightly says: “Japan would have been justified launching its pre-emptive strike against Pearl Harbour in 1941. The United States certainly posed a threat to Japan, was quite hostile to it, and indeed, was developing weapons of mass destruction which it later used against Japanese civilians – unnecessarily and after Japan was already effectively defeated”. Planning and initiating aggressive war is a Nuremberg principle and for the same reason George Bush could also be subjected to the same process of accountability.
The war on terror has brought into salience the following latent aspects.

* President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney having been fully exposed in the immoral and unethical dealings at Harkan and Haliburton are using the war on terror to distract attention from the real issue.

* To prop up a macho image of Republican Party to be able to earn a second term in the coming elections in USA.

* To salvage the sinking economy of USA and the impending disaster of the Brettonwood institutions. The lucrative oil wealth of Iraq, the Gulf and Caspian Basin in Central Asian States are the latent motives behind the façade of so-called war against terror. Eric Margolis makes it explicit:

* The US attacked Afghanistan’s Taliban government to exact revenge for the Sept 11 attacks on America. But it quickly occurred to George Bush and Dick Cheney that retribution against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden offered a golden opportunity to expand American geopolitical influence into South and Central Asia, scene of the Caspian Basin oil boom.

* Central Asia’s oil and gas producers are landlocked. Their energy wealth must be exported through long pipelines. Competition over potential pipeline routes has become the 21st century’s geopolitical equivalent of the great power race to build strategic railroads, a rivalry that helped spark World War 1.

* He who controls energy, controls of globe. The US imports only 7% of its energy from the Mideast, but holds on to vital region in order to control the energy sources of its European and Japanese allies.

The doctrine objective of Primacy of USA in the global affairs, is the basic determining factor to intimidate nations that are likely to resist US global hegemony. In fact the Evil of Axis comprises mainly Muslim countries who are not reconciled to hegemony, which USA tends to perpetuate.
The track record of USA as a perpetrator of aggression and terror is indeed mind-boggling since the Second World War, USA has attacked twenty-one countries from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, to Nicaragua and yet the American strategists cannot make out why the world tends to hate them. In fact, it is totally fallacious argument that USA’s liberty and individual freedom is object of jealously for the world, if anything the soft power of America with all its concomitants like liberty, individual freedom have a seductive appeal for all the immigrants. They have never despised America for these values. But what is ironical and even a greater tragedy for USA is that these liberal values are on the wane and America is fast regressing into that very syndrome, which was despised by it as a typically authoritarian, in the erstwhile USSR. The soft power of USA is a casualty of no lesser magnitude than that of 9/11 tragedy.
USA bombed Afghanistan as a sequel to the 9/11 retaliation to target one person – Osama bin Laden – yet innocent people were massacred and nothing happened to the main culprit. What ethical standard US is adhering to in killing hundreds and thousands of human beings for the sake of one individual is hard to discern. This callous sensibility can be gauged from the fact when the former Secretary of State Madam Albright was confronted with a question that as part of the policy of sanctions against Iraq half a million children had died – that is more than what had died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She replied back, “that though it was a hard choice but we think, the price was worth it”.
The reality is that no one hates America for its domestic policies and its commitment to quintessential values of freedom and liberty but for the reason that American foreign policy was and continues to be Israel’s policy. Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians died because of Israeli aggression but no sanction was ever imposed upon it. Only when Iraq became an enemy of Israel USA severed all its friendship with Iraq and Saddam Hussein became the arch enemy. Who does not know that in late 1940’s the Zionist took over Palestine and drove out 700,000 people from their homes through wanton terrorism? The cold-blooded massacre is the gory drama, which is still being perpetuated on Palestine. There is no let in Israel terror, which has surpassed much beyond Stalinist Russia. “Arabs know that almost every bomb that kills people came from America, every bullet, every tank, every fighter plane is manufactured or paid by the American dollars. It is America’s billion of dollars of support to the Jewish state that has enabled the Jewish state to terrorize the Arab people for half a century.” Why should then Arabs not hate America?
Double standard is at the root of the global chaotic order, which prevails. If invasion of Kuwait was Iraq’s cardinal sin so was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Nearly 3,000 Kuwaitis were killed but in Lebanon there were 40,000 casualties. If Iraq disobeyed UN resolution to vacate Kuwait, Israel also disobeyed UN resolutions to leave Lebanon. If Iraq violated international conventions, on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Israel is a much greater violator of all the conventions and has all kinds of weapons of mass destruction in its arsenal. If Iraq refuses UN inspection so did Israel. Only a perverted logic can explain that Iraq gets bombed whereas Israel continues getting dollars. Only recently North Korea made explicit commitment to have developed nuclear weapons but it is only Iraq, which is being discriminated against. Terrorism in the world has its roots in the notorious concept of clash of civilizations and Muslim countries are being made special targets. Ironically USA supports dogmatic regime but it has all the disdain for a country like Iran where democratic values are being practiced. Bosnia and Kosovo are never anywhere near fundamentalism but their miseries have hardly subsided.
Muslims countries are resolving their existential dilemma as after World War II a good number of them became decolourized. Initially there were only three countries, which remained independent like Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. Now the number has swelled to fifty-seven. No doubt they have attained freedom but they are till going through the excruciating period of transition from traditional to more liberal social order. A good number of them are still under dictatorial pattern of governance. Osama bin Laden was essentially voice of dissent against the imperial social order in Saudi Arabia and is overly critical of the continued military presence of USA on the sacred soil of Arabian Peninsula. It is wrong to simply take him as a person. He is a metaphor of defiance and is not isolated in this respect. Colonel Qadafi of Libya and Castro of Cuba reflected the same sensibility. Muslim societies face dual tragedies. There is appalling poverty and ignorance and their rulers whom they generally dislike are being patronized by USA and nothing has been done to ameliorate their sufferings and deprivations. In other words, the imperatives of de-colonization have never been taken into account. According to a political scientist: “Decolonization represents a watershed in human history. It is both the rejection of a dominant power structure and the affirmation of a new awakening. The people in struggle, in revolt, manifest a yearning for a new relation between man and man and groups of men. But decolonization is not always a complete or a completed process. Sometimes it is piecemeal, fragmented, partly genuine, partly spurious, partly accomplished, partly compromised. Whatever shape and form it takes, decolonization nevertheless represents a decisive break with past, a step away from the domination of the colonial masters and their indigenous agents”.
Frantz Fanon rightly characterizes violence in the backdrop of colonial education. He says, “since violence was used in the ordering of the colonial world, which has ceaselessly drummed the rhythm for the destruction of native social forms, therefore when the time comes, violence would be used by the natives to wreck the colonial world”.